Harold Ramis doesn't want to give away any spoilers on Ghostbusters III, but he promises that the sequel won't be in the same league as the disaster known as Caddyshack II.

"I’ve been burned with sequels in the past," Ramis tells SpoutBlog in a great Q&A today. "Even the sequel to Ghostbusters was not nearly as popular as the original."

So what was wrong about Ghostbusters 2? "I don’t know. It came out four years after the original one. ... I had ideas for it that got changed in going through the development mill. Everyone has a different idea, and what ended up in the script was not necessarily the way I would have gone," Ramis says to SpoutBlog.

Still, it's better than Caddyshack 2, the 1988 disaster starring Jackie Mason and Dyan Cannon (and featuring a far-smaller role for Chevy Chase). Ramis is credited as a writer on the script, but don't blame him for what went wrong.

"Rodney Dangerfield wanted to keep it alive. The studio loved the idea, but he was the only one who wanted to do it. Ted Knight had passed away. Bill Murray had no interest. Chevy had moved on. So it was going to be a movie based around Rodney ... Then Rodney pulled out. ... I pulled out at that time, and they went ahead and did it anyway..."

The result? Cinematic infamy. The Washington Post called it "lamer than a duck with bunions, and dumber than grubs."

"We literally crawled out of the theater when we saw it," Ramis said. "We didn’t want anyone to recognize us."

About this blog

Relive the '80s music, movies and culture with Tampa Bay Times correspondent Steve Spears. A teen during the greatest decade ever, Steve is obsessed with everything from Duran Duran to Journey, John Hughes to John Cusack, and parachute pants to big hair.